NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed in an interview published over the weekend that military people working at the NSA sometimes shared sexually explicit pictures found during surveillance. He spoke via a Google video Hangout to the Planet Earth Conference in New York, calling on developers to build security and privacy into everyday technology products, saying that his “future work” will involve building such products in the future.

Michael Kelley is the front page editor for Business Insider: Q: Can you tells us more about what Snowden claimed? Who was passing around what and where did the material come from? Q: Snowden said the British government pioneered most invasive surveillance. What reason did he give for that? Q: Snowden said he’d work on building security and privacy into everyday products. Isn’t that happening already?

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A: Said: British government pioneered most invasive surveillance because fewer restrictions on privacy protections than US and othersA: Guardian interviewA: “military personnel” between the ages of 18 and 22A: Snowden: “seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions.”

The New York-based Human Rights Foundation is hosting a two-day hackathon in San Francisco on August 2 and 3 to brainstorm new ways to get outside information to the citizens of North Korea. Instead of working on ways to hack into North Korean systems, this session aims to find new methods for reaching the North Korean public.

A: Information is strictly controlled in North Korea, which does not have a free press, and only allows internet access to an elite few.A: Several prominent North Korean defectors will attend the event including pro-democracy activist Park Sang-hak, former North Korean child prisoner Kang Chol-hwan, media personality Park Yeon-mi and Kim Heung-Kwang, a former professor in computer studies in North Korea. A: Methods currently used to get information into the country include CDs and DVDs, USB sticks, shortwave radio, and leaflets dropped from balloons.

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BlackBerry has hired former Sybase president Marty Beard as Chief Operations Officer.

Natalie Gagliordi = Staff writer on ZDNet for CBS Interactive.Q: Can you tell us more about Mary Beard and where he came from? Q: Chen has turnaround experience -- from Sybase. But does Marty Beard? Q: How will Chen and Beard’s job be made more difficult after the IBM/Apple deal?

Natalie GagliordiStaff writer, ZDNet @natalienoell

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A: BlackBerry CEO John Chen was the CEO of Sybase until 2012, following the completion of its acquisition by SAP.A: Before Sybase, Beard worked at Oracle as the VP of its e-commerce service unit

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Natalie Gagliordi * zdnet.com * @natalienoell

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According to Variety, Hasbro and 3D printing company Shapeways have paired on a pilot project to let you print your own My Little Pony fan art ... kind of. Hasbro has selected a few "super fans" to upload their custom pony art, and consumers can order these special editions to be printed and sent to their homes.

A: To upload your own art, you apply through the SuperFanArt site.A: Currently there are five artists selling their ponies through the site. A: Some of the first My Little Pony creations, available on SuperFanArt will be shown at San Diego Comic-Con this week.A: Hasbro is starting with ponies, but could expand the program to other brands, including Transformers, Monopoly, Play-Dowh, Magic: The Gathering, Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf

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Twitter wants to improve its direct message feature to compete with mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Line. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Twitter Vice President International Operation Shailesh Rao said that the company hopes to compensate for slow Twitter user growth in the US with more users in Latin America and Asia.

A: Twitter tweeted: "Over the next few weeks, we're rolling out an update that makes deleting DMs more consistent across web and mobile. We're also making an update to the Twitter iPhone and Android apps that will allow you to access your entire DM history."A: introduced pop-up notifications on the web in AprilA: twitter still hasn’t turned a profitA: founded in 2006A: 78% of Twitter's more than 255 million users are located outside the U.S.A: 28% of revenue comes from outside the U.S.

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We told you Friday that Lenovo was ending sales in the United States of sub-10-inch Windows tablets because of low demand. But over the weekend, Lenovo posted a clarification, saying they have no such plans, and intend to keep selling the tablets. While they have canceled sales of the ThinkPad 8 tablet, and they are out of stock on the 8-inch Miix product, they do plan to keep selling the Miix in the US once they produce more -- which should happen in time for the holiday buying season.